I run my hands through clay and its like a living body; soft, wet, tactile, pliable. It speaks of Earth (clay), Water (the way a river carves its bed, water forms the clay) Air and Fire (to dry, to burn). The primary elements of life coalesce in this process and I witness and participate in the transformation at each stage of development.

Working with clay requires the artist to alter their day-to-day relationship with time, waiting for the precise moment when one can build, model, carve, draw or fire...So for me it's a dance between ideas, expression and this medium which has its own inherent nature that I find always challenging and surprising.

The origins, structures and cycles of organic life with its inexhaustible creation of forms continues to mesmerize.

The symbolic quality of the egg-as-creation has permeated art history which in turn has influenced my work. In the Brera Madonna (1472), by Piero della Francesca, the Virgin is seated with child and a single egg hangs over the dome directly over the figures. In Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights (1480) his figures enter and emerge from egg-like shells, seeming to return to a womb-like existence. Brancusi, through the ovoid, expresses his symbolic approach to reality.

I group these primary forms so they relate to one another as families; suddenly they seem as family portrait. You can see the similarities, yet each is very much an individual. I like the idea of a still life, where a moment in time is captured. Like family portraits my works, singularly or together, are a reminder of continuity, of this cycle of life that goes on and on.